A Chance I'm Willing To Take
by rkolove
Summary: A late night bath complete with whiskey, cigarettes and one big risk. SLASH. RATED M FOR A REASON.


Well this is a rare occurrence - two one-shots in a matter of days. Don't worry, normal service will be resumed shortly (i.e. see you all in a couple of months...)

This little idea emerged around the same time as the pool fic idea did. I've always liked the thought of a certain man in a bath. I had a brief conversation with someone about it (they know who they are) and their initial thought was that it just had to be dirty. Pure and utter filth. My original idea, however, was pure fluff. Hopefully I've managed to achieve a sweet balance of the two. And if not, oh well.

**WARNING:** Slash. Implied non-con/dub-con.

**DISCLAIMER:** I don't own anyone in the WWE.

**A/N:** No names mentioned. Make your own mind up who's who.

Hope this chance pays off and you likey x

* * *

I gaze up at the pristine white ceiling, with its chic lighting that one becomes accustomed to when one's life is spent in hotels. I honestly think if someone placed me in a room, no matter which city, I would be able to tell what hotel company it was. My Mastermind subject of choice? Bathrooms.

I spend a lot of time in bathrooms. I used to shower straight after shows. But sometimes a man just needs his privacy. I spend enough time with the guys, I don't need to share my shower with them as well. So I head back to the hotel, run a bath till the water burns and then lie back and put the world to rights, preferably with a whiskey in one hand and a cigarette in the other.

I am in one of those prefarable situations right now. And it is even more preferable because for the first time in a long time, I'm not bunking with anyone. In fact, I'm not even in the same hotel as anyone else. I am completely alone. At one with solitude.

So instead of the standard bathroom suite I usually have to put up with, tonight is full of luxury. An old-fashioned cast iron tub placed in the middle of the room on it's own little pedestal. The taps placed in the centre of one side, the idea being (I presume) that two can share this magnificent setting without one drawing the short straw of the tap and plug end. I'm no prude, but there are limits to what I'll insert in my ass – a bath plug is one of them.

There was even a larger selection than normal of bath-specific potions to choose from. But I like tradition – water only. Anything else makes my mind think of women and women are not what I want to think about whilst I'm submerged in water. I prefer to leave my mind open to all possibilites.

And the view that comes with this particular bathtub is far more spectacular than the average four white walls. In this penthouse suite there are no walls. Only windows. Therefore my view is of whatever city this may be. And a panoramic view at that. I stood for several minutes observing the scene once the porter left me and my bags. The glass is so thick that I can't hear the wail of sirens, the rumble of traffic, the screams of people making their way to and from homes, clubs, work. As I looked down, I could see cars weaving along streets, slotting into place – organised chaos at its best. Sometimes that's how I feel my life is. Chaos organised into precise and decisive actions. My mind directing my otherwise uncontrolable limbs, making me walk, talk, punch, kick, scream, fuck.

I reach out to the stool I had carefully placed next to the tub and pick up the bottle of whiskey. I pour, re-screw the lid and raise the glass in a toast to no-one in particular. As I drink, I flip my phone over and press the home button. All that flashes up is the time and date. No missed calls. No unopened messages. I turn it back over and push it out of reach, before picking up the single cigarette and lighter. The first breath is always the best and I savour it by sliding further into the bath until I am submerged from the neck down. I exhale through my nose, and watch the smoke curl around the strands of steam still radiating from the water.

Placing the cigarette between my lips, I slip my free hand under the water and slowly trail my fingers over my chest. My eyes flutter closed as my fingers graze over my nipples, softened by the warm water, but slowly hardening under my touch. Inhaling through the side of my mouth and exhaling through my nose, I let my hand sink lower still, drifting over my stomach, flinching as my fingers float over the particuarly sensitive skin found just to the right of my bellybutton. Yes, it definitely wasn't solitude that brought about that discovery.

The only thing better than solitude is company. Sometimes company comes with a price tag. And sometimes it comes of its own will. The former just works out too expensive after a while. And the latter? Well, the latter comes out of choice and sometimes it doesn't like to choose company either. They say opposites attract. Funny, because although he is my opposite on many occasion, sometimes we're just too alike for our own good. We both have a temper that implodes at the slightest push. We both have a passion that cannot be sated. We both crave someone to hold us, to touch us, to love us. But we both have a tendancy to push that someone away, to fold ourselves away into the inner darkness of our minds until we feel ready to emerge into the daylight again and squint at each other till the walls fall down and everything is okay until the cycle repeats.

Right now, I would say we're still in the dark. Right now, I think he may be somewhere else in this city in his own bathtub. I'm speaking in metaphors obviously. His bathtub involves copius amounts of vodka and men and women who he pays to keep their judgements to themselves. I've encountered his darkness once or twice. I've been dragged down into backalleys, down metal stairways, into clubs with music that made my heart and soul vibrate and seen depravity that not only terrified me but turned me on to boiling point so that when I blew my load, I thought my heart was about to suffer its own blow out too.

I've witnessed his highs and lows, his kinks and his limits, of which there are few. He opened my mind to the endless possibilites that lay before me and him, together, alone, whenever, however. Yet what he fails to understand that my biggest kink is not anyone's cock or any toy or any sex lair or dark dudgeoen. He forgets that I'm a man of simple but unique pleasures. And there is nothing more simple or unique than him.

He forgets that I like the good things in life, that I aspire for luxury, for beauty. I can find all of those things in him. And once again there we find another similarity. Because even if he says that his best times have been spent with, or without, me in some sex club, with glory holes, transvestites and enough toys that would make the average sex shop owner ashamed, I know that none of that compares to when it's just me and him in bed. He can deny it all he wants. There is no denying the look in his eye, the sound of his voice or the way he clenches around me. I may be massaging my own ego, but everything else pales in comparison to me.

He likes it simple. As do I. Yet it's impossible for him to understand that. I've tried, Lord knows I have, to explain this to him. And everytime it ends in the same way. A slammed door in my face. A message that tells me to quit calling him. He avoids me at all costs and when he doesn't have a choice, if we're stuck in a lift or on a coach or in the ring, he avoids my gaze.

All I can do is wait it out. I am forced to wait until he sinks into the beyond – I watch the dark rings under his eyes form, the bites on his neck get redder and redder, the finger marks on his hips turn from green to purple, the way he adjusts himself, grimacing in pain and I watch him do it night after night, day after day until weeks, months later he knocks at my door and breaks down in my arms.

Why is a question I have given up asking myself. I don't know why. He does what he does and I do what I do and in the end everything seems to turn out okay. I know some day it won't. Some day he won't come knocking on my door and there won't be tears and comforting hugs and kisses. Eventually he'll fall into the abyss and won't survive. I'll get a phone call and that will be the end of it.

Hence why I keep checking my phone. It's been five weeks to the day since we last spent a night together. I didn't even say a word. We fucked, just me and him. I came inside him, held him in my arms, kissed his forehead softly. I was kind. I was caring. And it was all too much. I'm too attached he told me. I want too much from him. I want something he can't give me. Himself.

Yes, I want him. But I don't want ownership. I've got my kinks, but owning him isn't one of them. I want equality. Apparently that's not something he's open to discussion on. Instead, he is more content with fucking, being fucked and sucking whatever cock comes his way. And I'm the selfish one.

He cheats on me on a regular basis. He says it doesn't count. I don't know how he came to that conclusion. In my book sleeping with someone else constitutes cheating. He says he doesn't sleep with them. I count being sucked off, or sucking someone else off as cheating. Apparently it's a grey area.

Ash drops from the cigarette into the bath. My hand has stopped it's journey south. My cock is too flaccid, my mind too caught up in what he may or may not be doing to think of happier times that I can comfortably get off on. Memories that leave me satisfied on a pure and honest level are hard to come by. These days my thoughts of him usually lead me down said metal stairs into said clubs where said depravity occurs. And I refuse to let my wanking material consist of him sucking someone else's cock whilst jacking me off.

I retrive my hand and shake off the water over the side of the bath before removing the remains of the cigarette from my mouth and stubbing it out in the ashtray. I refill my glass and take a long swig.

I tried to embrace his lifestyle. And for a time it worked. I spent months pretending that it was what I wanted too. I naively thought it would solve all our problems. If we had a common interest, we would be settled for life. And I thought, again naively, that after a while he'd get bored of it. But he just kept pushing the boundaries. I couldn't keep up. He just continued to spiral out of control with drink, drugs, sex, men, women, whoever cared to be in the wrong place and the right time.

So I left him to it until he turned up at my hotel room begging for me to take him back. And I did. I guess that's my problem, he's too hard to resist. He looks at me through those thick eyelashes, his bottom lip trembling, his voice choked up and I can't help but pull him inside the room, undress him and show him how much I fucking worship the ground he walks on.

Maybe that's why he does it. Maybe it is my fault after all. Maybe he just knows that I'll take him back no matter what because he does acknowledge how I feel about him and he realises that he has that control over me.

Maybe it's my fault because I think that one day he will stay with me and he won't go back to his old ways and we'll get that happy ending. Everyone deserves a happy ending right? Or maybe that's the problem. Maybe we've fucked our chances and the gods have turned against us and now we're just left with endless suffering until death do us part.

I might be old fashioned but I refuse to believe it. I will get my happy ending. Either now or in years to come.

I believe it so much that I always leave my room card at the front desk with a note addressed to him. I tell him where I am, on the off chance that one day he'll read the note, take the card and come back to me. No apologies necessary.

Yes, maybe I am leaving myself open to hurt, to old wounds being re-opened, to old arguments being thrashed out again and again, but it's a chance I'm willing to take. And I'll take it time and time again.

I place the empty glass on the stool and close my eyes.

* * *

I open one eye. The bath water has cooled significantly and I fumble to pull the plug. I listen to the water drain for a minute and re-fill the hole. I twist the hot tap and hiss as the scalding water hits my leg. I shift as far to the left as I can and watch the water level steadily rise until its heat surrounds me. One look at my hands tells me how long I've been asleep – the skin has crinkled into soft ridges and fold and bend easily under my touch.

Reaching out I flip my phone over and glance at the time. 3am. My ride to the next city leaves in four hours, yet I'm nowhere near ready to get out of this bath and manouvere my way to the bed, not matter how inviting the sheets look. A bed that size was not meant to be slept in alone. And those sheets were not made for sleeping between. They're the kind of sheets one dreams of getting tangled in, sheets that pool easily at the waist, sheets that wrap themselves around bodies not letting them escape, sheets that you want to pull over your head whilst you capture another's lips and lose your inhibitions entirely.

My eyelids begin to droop once more. Sleep washes over me like a strong tide, begging to pull me under.

The sound of a click, followed by another keeps me alert. One eye opens once again. Soft footsteps make their way in my direction. They stop. Turn on the spot. A low whistle. And then a hand slides into view, curls around the whiskey bottle.

I tilt my head back and open the other eye. His face hovers above me, his bottom lip tucked away under his front teeth as he chews it relentlessly.

"You got my message?" My throat is dry, my voice raspy.

He nods, unscrewing the bottle, raising it to his lips before he pours an endless stream of liquid down his throat. I watch his Adam's apple bob as he swallows and take note of the purple bruise which seems to encircle the base of his neck. I wonder if it's from choice or from force. Sometimes the difference is miniscule.

"Enough?"

He nods, lowering the bottle. I wonder if he understood what I was asking.

"Join me?"

He chews his lip once again and as he places the bottle back on the stool, I notice his hands are shaking. I watch them tremble still as he pulls off his shirt, revealing welts yet to fade. Heaving myself into an upright position, I curl my hand around his wrist and pull him round to one side. He watches me motionless as I unbuckle his pants and slide them down his legs. He steps out of them silently and waits for me to hook my fingers into the waistband of his boxers. I hold my breath, wondering what waits for me beneath the fabric. I ease them down slowly, reminding myself of every groove, every crevice, every mark. For once, nothing is out of place. Everything is exactly how I remember it.

I lean forward, water slopping dangerously close the rim of the bath, and place a kiss on his hip. He breathes in sharply, a hand slowly find its way to the back of my head, his fingers brushing over my hairline.

"Forgive me?" he croaks.

I pull back and look up. I watch the tears form, watch them tumble down his cheeks. I reach up and brush them away as I nod.

He steps into the bath and starts to sit down facing him. I shake my head and open my arms. His lips form a small, yet brief, smile as he turns and glides backwards in the water until his back is pressed against my chest and his head of soft dark curls rests on my shoulder.

"Forgive me?" he asks again, his voice breathless, tired.

I kiss his temple in response.

He opens his mouth to speak again, but I manage to stop him before he can. My finger grazes against his dry, cracked lips.

"Enough."

He nods.

I kiss his temple again, and then his cheek, the tip of his nose as I turn his face towards mine. He stares at me, fear in his eyes. As if at any second I'll laugh in his face. Five weeks and he emerges a wreck. How can he not see what he's doing to himself? How can he not understand that the hurt, pain, anger and torture he puts himself through damages himself not only physically, but mentally as well?

And when will he learn that I'll never laugh in his face, no matter how bad things become?

I capture his lips, wet them with my tongue, silently beg him to open his mouth, to let him in. Soft, gentle kisses that tell him everything is okay. Kisses that turn into deeper, harder ones that confirm that I forgive him, that confirm that I still want him. Pulling away, I stroke his cheek, watching as he lowers his gaze, until I tilt his head back and force him to look at me.

"I'm sorry," he whispers.

"I know."

He turns in my arms, presses his mouth against my chest, up my neck to my face, to my mouth. His legs slide against mine as he struggles to balance in a bath which seems to have shrunk in size. It certainly wasn't built for two men. Man and woman, sure. Two women, maybe. But two men is out of the question. But there's no way I'm moving. There's no way I can move with him pressed against me, his cock poking at mine, prodding it into life.

His mouth tastes exactly how I remember it. His skin is as soft as it always was and his reactions to my touch is how it has always been. As I graze my fingers down his spine I can feel a smile tug at my lips as he groans and arches his back.I clutch at his hips, pulling him down, so he can feel my cock rub against his ass. For a split second, I freeze, remembering where he's been, what he's done, or rather, who he's done. Terrifying thoughts fly through my mind in an instant.

He pauses and pulls back, searching my face for reassurance. Right now I can't offer him words of comfort, all I can I do is just show him. So I forget where he's been, what he's done or rather, who he's done and I let my cock slide against his crack, feel the tip nudge at his entrance and feel his moan vibrate along my lips as he kisses me hard.

I let my head roll back as his lips glide down my throat, diving for the spot on my neck he knows drives me insane. He can and will torture me for hours with his kisses and bites to that sweet spot. For someone who can act like he doesn't even know who I am, he sure knows everything about me when it matters. He knows every inch of me and I know every inch of him – so why does he want to ruin it all with other people? Why can't he see that this is what we both want and need?

His hand snakes down my stomach as his teeth sink into my nipple, making me yelp and hiss and writhe. I tense, waiting, wanting, needing his hand to wrap around my length, so he can pull me into oblivion. But instead I feel his hand wrap around his own cock and against my stomach, he starts a steady rhythm. He rests his head against my chest, pressing open-mouthed kisses onto my skin. I run a shaky hand through his hair, my fingers chasing droplets of water and sweat that drip down his neck. I lick my lips, wishing I could just lean down that little bit further to run my tongue along his hairline and capture every bit of moisture possible.

He grunts, the sound slightly muffled as he twitches against me and I can almost feel what he's feeling – that tingling, burning sensation that starts off as a low murmur in the stomach, slowly spreading south to the groin where it wraps itself around your entire length like an extra hand. And then it starts to tease, waning once in a while, venturing between the legs, settling under the skin until the time is right for it re-join your hand until you explode and holler and scream.

"I need you."

Three words that mean so much more than anything else he could possibly say. It's more than an apology. More than asking for forgivenes.

_He needs me._

Gripping his hips, I raise him high enough to slide my legs shut beneath him so only my cock protudes. His thighs spread easily, his knees nudging against my sides as he finally glides into place. One hand still massages his length as he leans forward enough for me to slide a finger along his crack and into his puckered entrance.

He hisses at the intrusion. For a moment I wonder if it's all an act, a trick to try and make me believe that it's only ever been me. But one look at his face tells me otherwise. Tears reappear, the bottom lip trembles and I realise he's in pain. Real pain. No lies, no tricks. Slowly, I ease my finger out, kissing away the tears. I move my hand, rubbing the base of his spine instead, my fingers only occasionally grazing the curve of his rear. And slowly, the tension seems to shift from his body. His arms curl around my neck and he presses against me like a cat, nuzzling my chest.

Only then do I tenatively move south again, a finger brushing along his crack, holding my breath for signs of pain. All I get is a low moan and the twitch of the lips. I ease my finger inside him once more, desperate to control myself, anxious not to cause him any more unecessary pain. He hisses, but it soon fades into a sigh and I try my luck with another finger. He grunts, wriggling against me, pushing down, pulling my fingers further inside him. I take another step and slowly scissor my two fingers, stretching him out, praying it won't backfire.

His teeth nip my skin. His moan is throaty and his cock jerks between us.

"I need you."

Those three words again.

He sits up slowly, edging back and I almost howl as I feel the tip of my cock slip inside him. I raise my hips, gripping fistfuls of his skin as I slowly enter him. I watch as his head rolls back, his arms tense, muscles defining themselves before my eyes as he clutches the edge of the tub. His cock emerges from the water, the tip swollen and dripping. I quickly grab it, run a thumb over the tip, enjoying how his face contorts in pleasure.

And then he starts to move. Gripping the edge of the bath, he pulls himself up, my cock almost leaving his body and then lowers himself down, taking me back in again to the hilt. I lie there, my gaze flicking between his face and his cock, watching it slide in and out of my fist, as he fucks himself and me on alternate strokes.

His eyes are squeezed shut, his lips clenched together, his moans not making it past his throat. I watch sweat drip down his face, his neck onto his chest. I hiss as he starts to sviwel his hips and suddenly I'm staring into his wide, open eyes.

"I need you."

A third time.

"You have me," I manage to gasp, my hand leaving his hip, desperate to touch his face, clutch his neck and pull him down to kiss me. I try and fail, my palm only just caressing the side of face as his movements become more erratic and water which has been daring to for a while, finally cascades over the side of the bath.

He giggles, the noise going straight to my crotch, my hips bucking frantically. He presses a kiss to my palm, before capturing my fingers in his mouth, sucking them hard, his tongue swirling around them.

He clenches around me, as my fingers slip from his mouth and slide down his chin to his neck.

"Not yet," I groan, my hand gripping his cock tightly, fisting him hard and fast as he slams himself down on my length over and over again, until...

He collapses forward, more water splashing over the sides. My back arches as I empty my release inside him. One hand clutches the back of his head, as the other pulls its way out from beneath our bodies, covered in his essence.

"I'm sorry."

"No apologies necessary," I murmur.

"This one is."

I cup the back of his head and pull him back far enough so I can look into his eyes. Deep, sorrowful eyes.

I take a deep breath.

And take a chance.

**Fin x**


End file.
